re bad leadership

[Terry Reedy]

"Paul Boddie" <paul at boddie.net> wrote in message
news:23891c90.0107260053.70747d65 at posting.google.com...

> However, it's arguably more relevant to discuss the fact that this
> changes well-defined semantics in the language.

This has been for at least a month.  I summarized the issues 'so far'
in 'Language Change and Code Breaks' on July 10.

> It's extremely  important for pragmatic reasons to discuss how much
damage this change
> will cause.

There have been several good posts on this topic.  Some 'surprised' me
in the sense of pointing out things I had not considered because they
arise from experiences I have not had.  Very educational.  If you have
anything new to add, please do.

I think the proper focus now is how to minimize the impact, given the
problem scenarios presented so far.

> I'm sure we'd all love to see a nice and consistent numeric system,
> but Python is a mature language in widespread use. It's tempting for
> some to think that with a supposedly inevitable huge influx of new
> users that the volume of existing code will be dwarfed by new code
> within a short period of time, but regardless of whether this will
> happen or not, I think such "ideological" changes to the language
with
> such limited justification send the message to numerous
> highly-respected community members that their work is considered to
be
> of little value and can be sacrificed to the "language gods" on a
> whim.
>
> Paul

Is this a one-time gift/sacrifice, of this magnitude, in return for
Guido's gift of Python, or the first of a long series?  I'll let Guido
answer by word and ultimately by deed as he chooses.

Terry J. Reedy